She turned and looked back at him just before she left.
‘Oh,’ she said.
He lifted his head from the desk and stared at her.
‘You know about the May Fair, do you? On Saturday?’
He cast his mind back, vaguely recalling a notice on the village green.
‘May Fair? Oh, right.’
‘You’ll come, won’t you? It’s so much fun. And you might learn a few things about us.’
She left.
He sat up eventually, bleary-eyed and thick-headed, still feeling drugged with arousal, but determined to stamp it down. He was a soldier of righteousness, and she was his adversary, trying to run him through with the lance of fornication. He let this metaphor run through his mind for a few moments longer, enjoying the image of himself in shining armour atop a fine steed.
He looked again at the antique writing desk that had formed part of the vicarage fixtures and fittings. Where was the key for that locked drawer? He’d asked Mrs Witts but she’d just given him her trademark bamboozled look and gone back to boiling asparagus. They had the best asparagus around here, elegant spears whose delicacy was famed across the country. In fact, all the fruit and vegetables grew in embarrassing abundance, nature’s bounty blessing the Vale every year. Scientists had come to try and work out what made the soil so very fertile, but nobody had formulated a plausible theory yet. Chemically, it was no different to the neighbouring lands.
An image of Evie, taking village lad after village lad and performing those invocations to Robin Goodfellow sprang into his mind uninvited.
How preposterous. They probably believed that their barbaric little ritual was what made the tomatoes so very fat and red and the cucumbers so perfectly long and green. Idiotic superstitions.
He jiggled the drawer handle again, then gave up and let his head fall back on the polished walnut.
Evie in the cornfield. What made her the way she was? What kind of woman let herself be penetrated by a succession of men in pursuit of some ungodly tradition?
He sat up, rigid, his eyes wide.
Somebody was using her, making her the instrument of his will. Her conversation about Adam and Eve had been code, some kind of cry for help, maybe? She wanted him to save her from the serpent.
A force of evil, somewhere in the background, was decanting his foul lusts into the vessel of Evie’s helpless body.
He would find out who it was. He would banish him, as God banished Lucifer from the chorus of the angels. This Adam and Eve would not fall. This Adam and Eve could … Oh Lord, is that your purpose? Is that why you have brought me here? To show me my destiny, my, my, my wife?
Please. Let it be so.
‘Evie, tell me about your ritual in the cornfield,’ he commanded urgently the minute she had passed through his door on the Wednesday evening.
She looked surprised at his enthusiastic welcoming of her. Of course, she couldn’t know that the very sight of her made his insides melt, his stomach churn, his skin prickle, his heart tighten. He longed to take her in his arms and tell her he knew her terrible secret and he could protect her, shield her even if it meant his death. But she wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
‘Evenin’, vicar,’ she said, dropping her handbag on the desk.
She looked luminous in a green halter-neck top and a flouncy white cotton skirt, like a ravishing village gypsy about to dance on her bare brown feet.
‘The ritual?’ he prompted.
‘I thought you knew all about that, what with having a ringside seat for the last one.’ She sat down, attempting a demure look that didn’t quite come off.
‘I know what you do, of course. But why do you do it?’
‘For a good harvest. It brings the favour of Robin Goodfellow to the village.’
Adam raised his eyes to the ceiling and humphed in faux amusement.
‘Robin Goodfellow? You really believe that?’
‘I really believe that we have the best harvests around, every single year. So why wouldn’t I? God, on the other hand, don’t seem to do that much for us.’